Food is important. Heating food easily in emergency situations is also important. Eating cold uncooked meals quickly wear down one’s spirit.
When I first started taking prepping a bit more seriously, I invested in this simple portable gas stove. It came in a protective plastic case for easy transportation and storage.
When the grid goes down and your electrical appliances won’t work, this is a great and cheap piece of equipment to have on hands. Pull out of the closet, plug a cartridge in, and ignite the flame. It quickly boils water for a hot drink or cooks food.
Combine this with a small batch of butane gas cartridges, and some shelf stable food and you have a great crisis food system in place.
For fueling this stove, I keep around 7 cartridges at the ready.
For the food, each country has their own most popular or readily available brands of pre-packaged food. Where I live, the brand REAL Turmat (REAL Field Meal) is available at many store and tastes very good.
I have stocked up on two weeks of different meals to have in a crisis situation. This particular brand has a expiry date of five years from production date. Perfect as you won’t need to rotate the food especially often. As this is freeze dried food, it will most likely be good to eat even years after official expiry date, though I would not recommend letting the food pass its expiry date.
It can also act as a small emergency heating source if the power goes out during the winter. Be extremely caution if using this indoor, though. No ongoing emergency becomes easier if the house catches on fire, as well.
Today was just a small-scale dry-run to test out the equipment. If the grid goes down, it’s nice to know that some hot delicious chicken soup is just minutes away all the time.
Until next time!